網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

might triumph. Greater danger threatened that portion of the Church which, having made an alliance with the world, enjoyed apparent felicity. The very life of religion might have been eaten out from its heart, though of oak, by the parasite ivy which had clasped it, bole and branch; so that while existing in name, and looking green in appearance, from the root to the topmost bough all had been but a barren trunk-a sapless stem-a tree "withered, without fruit, twice dead," and ere long to be "plucked up." Nevertheless, herein, also, was the wisdom of God, which appointed the Church militant to be "a floor whereon wheat and chaff are mingled together." By this means it was that he literally sent into the highways and hedges for guests to the festival which he had prepared: for we read that the Emperor Constantine promised a white garment and twenty pieces of gold to every convert, and that in one year twelve thousand men, in consequence, were baptized at Rome. Converts so bought could not be good Christians; but it was thus decreed by Providence, that, at least they should no longer be pagans. Thus, also, in the deserts of Thebaïs, two Egyptian hermits gave example of an institution which, though righteously visited at last for the evil which it engendered, was permitted for wise and good purposes. To monachism we are indebted for the preservation of learning, and for its revival; and when the Monks were relapsing into inutility, an order of more apparent piety and greater learning, in the persons of the Friars, by their renunciation of all worldly views, engaged the affections of the common people. Then came the time when, for their degeneracy, they were to be superseded. Thus, whatever evil attended any of these institutions, or however defective in their conception, each had its temporary utility; for as is quaintly observed by Coleridge, “in the process of evolution, there are in every plant growths of transitory use and duration. The integuments of the seed, having fulfilled their destined office of protection, burst and decay. After the leaves have unfolded, the cotyledons, that had performed their functions, wither and drop off." But, in the season of this dropping and withering, is the Church out of danger then? Oh, no! This, also, is a "perilous time." There is danger that in separating the husk from "the staff of life," of which it is the genuine growth, we should reject the grain also. There is danger, that in fearlessly casting aside all "superstitious awe" for "the palpable interpolations of vermin"-in the unshrinking "removal of excrescences that contain nothing of nobler parentage than maggots of moth or chafer"-we should too heedlessly winnow away the fruit also which is blended with them. It is a true maxim of the Roman Catholic Church, that "the Church, though sometimes profaned by its unworthy members, is always pure and spotless, as becomes the chosen spouse of Christ." Christ, "the Spirit of Truth," has promised to be with his Church even to the end. Christianity was described as a tree, to be raised from a seed by Him who brought himself the seed from heaven, and first sowed it. the tares and the wheat shall grow together until the harvest. season when men undertake to distinguish between them is indeed a "perilous time."

Also

The

It was, in fact, in the bosom of those institutions, which were as

the integuments of the seed, that those champions of learning and religion were produced, to whom the Church is indebted for whatever good has resulted from the Reformation-Wickliffe, Erasmus, and Luther. The evils and errors which were therein previously found, and the disorders occasioned by them, were but as the growing pains of the Church, the growth of which was undoubtedly promoted by the counteraction which they excited. They were stages of suffering necessary to be borne in its progress towards a more adequate correspondence with that ideal state of perfection to which the faithful continually aspire. Wickliffe owed to the schoolmen the consummate mastery (for that age), which he exerted over the knottiest questions of theology; but they were rather practical evils which excited his indignation. The degenerated Friars were the first objects of his hostility; next, the Pope himself was honoured with his opposition. The philosophy in which he had been bred, astute as it was, did not enable him to rise above the region of private delinquency to a right view of those institutions which the sins of individuals had profaned. The old wine was bad, and therefore he brake the bottles; or rather the new wine in himself burst the vessel in which it was contained, and set at naught the system of things, within which his course of action would otherwise have been restrained. The more faithful spirit with which he was animated was impatient of old forms, and rebelled against the ancient limits. In the extremity of his zeal, he denied all authority to the Church, and made his appeal alone to the Scriptures. But this extremity of zeal was needful, one more moderate would not have borne him through the great labour of his translation. For his version of the Bible, shall the name of Wickliffe be held in everlasting remembrance. But the greatness of the work can only be appreciated by considering the circumstances under which it was undertaken. complete version of the Old and New Testament had preceded his. Different portions of both had, between the seventh and eleventh centuries, indeed, been rendered into Saxon; such as Cadmon's Paraphrase, King Alfred's Translations, and the few manuscripts of the Psalter, part of which is in Latin. Besides these obsolete attempts, the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles were paraphrased into rude and rhymeless verse by one Orme; and there exist a metrical paraphrase of the Old and New Testament, entitled Sowle-hele; and another, but similar, version of Genesis and Exodus, composed in the Northern dialect, in which also is a rhymed version of the Psalms. None of these versions are literal. Some specimens of literal translations of a later date are extant, but they are of scattered portions of the Scripture only. Wickliffe projected and accomplished a version of the whole. His translation was made from the Latin text. Doubtless he was assisted in the work; and probably, as to some parts, only superintended and revised the labour of others. But on this account he deserves no less commendation. To the Scriptures, on which he had thus expended skill and industry of no common significance, he made his appeal on all occasions of controversy. By him the right of private interpretation was announced, and that of the Church discredited. In the latter particular, he certainly went too far. Some authority must be allowed to the Church,

No

though it claimed, undoubtedly, more than it could establish by proof. Authority and evidence are the twin supporters of the Church, and should never be separated; and in those points of doctrine and discipline for which no scriptural evidence can be given, and which are yet reasonable, the authority of the Church must be admitted. But the corruption of the Church had impaired the authority of the Church; and this fact is sufficient to excuse Wickliffe of whatever excesses he may be charged with.

Luther, also, was a spirit of the daring kind, whose character is well contrasted with that of Erasmus. Never was the difference between the speculative and practical reformer so well illustrated as in these two great men. One undertook to stir up men's minds in the cause of learning, the other of religion. To promote the interests of the former, it was not necessary to hurl kings from their thrones, or to eject priests from their altars. But the work was intended only for the learned and their pupils-it was not for the great body of the people. The learned would have had knowledge of the truth, and gloated, like misers, over the secret possession in the seclusion of their closets. It would, however, have been concealed from mankind in general. It cannot be denied that the invention of printing, nevertheless, would soon have communicated all that was known to the public mind; but without the revolution in the Church effected by Luther, the labourers in the vineyard would not have been so abundant, nor their labour so prevalent. The learned languages, also, probably would have been preferred to the vernacular dialects; and the varieties of human speech, now so beautiful in their state of comparative excellence to contemplate, might have remained uncultivated. Luther's translation of the Bible formed a standard of national language; and to the controversial writings composed in the vulgar tongues of other countries, is to be ascribed the first existence of such, as refined vehicles of thoughts and feelings, profound and subtle, lovely and sublime.

Thus the original impulse was given to that tide of inquiry which has since flowed on with accumulated force, even to this our day. The agitation of the waters, however, has not yet ceased; and though three centuries have passed since it first commenced, we still find that something remains to be done; that more was disturbed than could afterwards be re-settled.

The incompleteness of the Reformation is considered under very different aspects by different opinionists. By some literary men it is thought to have retarded by its convulsion the cause of learning. We are told that the literary taste of the Medici, or the hostility of the Venetian to the Roman see, or the commercial liberality of the Genevese, or the philosophic courage of the professors of Padua, would have established in Italy a free press, but for the Reformation-nay, that a purer reformation in the bosom of Italy itself was probably intercepted by the premature violence of Luther and his followers. It is complained that the printers, to whom it was left to disseminate all extant knowledge, not having wheat, sowed tares. Society was, from the want of a vernacular literature, unprovided with elementary books; and the instruction imparted was in quality not only behind the acquirement of the age, but behind the era of the revival of letters.

The

new public of readers," says a determined literary opponent of the Reformation," had to feed on the husks of a dull and mistaught generation. A style of superstition, which Rome had encouraged two centuries before, and had deposited in the monastic libraries of Europe, was now generalized among the laity of the North by the efficacious industry of the press. Declamations of mystical piety, and arguments of scholastic theologians, which the Italian clergy had already thrown by, were again handed about by the German people as oracles of religion. Errors and prejudices, not easily untaught, were thus scattered far more widely than if literature had remained confined to the possession of manuscripts."

This class of objectors, however, may be readily set down by the orthodox for what would be the consequences contemplated by them from the Reformation which they prefer? It would have changed the whole character of the Revolution. The Socini and their fellowthinkers would, forsooth, have set forth a narrower creed-a version of the Holy Scriptures, "more carefully picked over than by the Council of Trent." Formed in the bosom of Italian taste,-stationed on a classic soil,-surrounded by a refined people,-whose poetry, an Ariosto and a Tasso-whose art, a Michael Angelo and a Raphael were illustrating ;-they, we are told, "would not have enlisted, like the Protestant barbarians, among the destroyers of the beautiful, but would have preserved, in all its majesty, the antique ritual of Rome; they would have associated intellect with our noblest pleasures. Reducing the established hagiolatry to that posthumous veneration for the benefactors of mankind, which is the natural religion of every grateful heart, and the strongest incentive to future excellence, they would have encouraged the people to superadd new altars to those, which were before visited in pilgrimage on the birth-day of the favourite saints, and to include the hero, the patriot, and the sage, among the worthies whose memory was consecrated by public piety." Rather than to lament, we have, we think, reason to be grateful to Providence for having been preserved from a reformation which would have combined the idolatrous system of the Church of Rome with the cold and heartless creed of the Socinian, whose boast it is that he recognizes not "the divinity which stirs within us," and has no perception of the godlike in the character of the Saviour of the World. Still less would such a reformation come recommended by another consideration which has much weight with its advocates-that it would have proceeded in harmony with the sceptical philosophy, of which toleration is described to have been the appropriate fruit. Of this, it is said, the great diffuser was Bayle, whose opinions are but in a small degree the result of the Reformation, being derived, for the most part, either from the ancient classics which he studied, or from the Latin writers of modern Italy, Pomponatius, and others. It may therefore readily be admitted without injury, in the orthodox mind, to the cause of the Reformation, that "the sceptical philosophy, with all its effects, would, in the person of some Frenchman or Italian, have blossomed and scattered its seeds among the ruling classes of society, whether the Protestant Reformation had or had not taken

place; since the predisposing causes, which were to provide it with apostles, lay in a literature independent of the Reformation."*

Leaving this merely literary objection, we must now proceed to matter of sterner moment. We pass on to the professors of opinion in the opposite extreme. The Puritans stand in direct contrast with the followers of the Socini. They lament that the full Reformation, designed by Wickliffe, had not proceeded to complete accomplishment. They desire that tithes should be considered as alms; that parishioners should be declared to have a right to withhold them where they judge it expedient to do so; and that pontifical and clerical habits should be abolished, with, perhaps, the orders distinguished by them. Some would also expect that the minister, like St. Paul, should labour with his own hands for his maintenance; and, in fact, that there should be no such thing as a Church Establishment. In the opinion of this sect, such prelates as Cranmer and Ridley were only "halting and timeserving;" and, indeed, the "unwieldy times" and reign of Edward the Sixth were no fit season" from whence to pattern out the constitution of a Church discipline." As little are they satisfied with the days of Queen Elizabeth, whose "private counsellors, whoever they were, persuaded her (as Camden writes) that the altering of ecclesiastical policy would move sedition." It is also a grave offence that the Liturgy was given to a number of moderate divines and Sir Thomas Smith, a statesman, to be purged and physicked ;" and that "those constitutions of Edward the Sixth, which in no way satisfied the men that made them, are now established for best, and not to be mended. From that time followed nothing but imprisonments, troubles, disgraces on all those that found fault with the decrees of the convocation, and straight were they branded with the name of Puritans." Such was the reading which Milton (no mean authority for the party he espoused) gave of the history of the times of Edward the Sixth and Elizabeth. Thus far it may be conceded to the statement of the Puritans, that Elizabeth went about the work of the Reformation too much in the spirit of a politician, and not with that purer and more pious feeling which directed the conduct of Edward. She had also an ignorant clergy to deal with an evil growing out of the spoliation of the Church

66

"Such poor, mute tongue-tied readers as scarce know,
Whether that God made Adam first or no."†

But, from the first breaking out of the Reformation, there was always a party, who, though they had a keen perception of the abuses in the Church, and some of them, like Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, had even written against and exposed them to literary ridicule, yet were desirous of arresting the tide of revolution. Such men could not look on with complacency to the subversion of existing institutions-their object was not to erect a rival Church, but to purify that in which they were born. It was also the desire of Elizabeth and her counsel

* The opinions which are thus animadverted upon, not too severely, are to be found in the late Mr. Taylor's Historic Survey of German Poetry, vol. i. § 12. + George Wither.

« 上一頁繼續 »